Innovation Efficiency of Chinese Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry from the Perspective of Innovation Ecosystem
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well structured, and the methodology was adequately applied. The scope of the research is to identify the trends in innovation, production efficiency and technological progress of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Despite that the research refers to local companies (form China) due to fact that they share large part of world market that could be valuable research. I encourage the authors to try to do further research by comparing the Chinese pharmaceutical companies to other world class pharmaceutical companies.
Author Response
We sincerely appreciate your comments and suggestions. Thank you for the approval of our research. We totally agree that a comparison of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry with other countries will be valuable research. This provides us with new research directions, and we will follow up in future research.
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract
The authors need to clearly state the aim of the research, as well as to provide some information about the methods.
Introduction
The authors should discuss, alongside to the research object and method, the approaches in the literature to measure innovation efficiency. A paper that can be useful:
Cruz-Cázares, C., Bayona-Sáez, C., & García-Marco, T. (2013). You can’t manage right what you can’t measure well: Technological innovation efficiency. Research policy, 42(6-7), 1239-1250.
The authors should also improve the arguments that support the originality and contributions of their research. I was able to find other empirical studies on the same topic witch results are not presented (see also other comment below).
Model
I missed an explication on how pharma industry works in current days. The authors should root the model development in the recent trends related to a paradigm shift in the process of drug development towards translational research and open innovation, with impact on the configuration of division of labor in the value chain. This is shaping the configuration of the industry innovation ecosystem.
Method and Data
The lag is too small for the typical R&D pharma process. The authors should test other lags and report the results in order to assess the impact of this decision on their results.
The authors should provide some data on the characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry in the several Chinese regions. It is not possible to understand the results without knowing the context: number of firms, size of firms, type of activities they are performing, position in the value chain.
Conclusion
The authors should discuss their results by confronting them with previous research. There are already empirical studies focusing on the same “research object” (of which only one is included in the reference list):
Liu, Z., & Lyu, J. (2020). Measuring the innovation efficiency of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry based on a dynamic network DEA model. Applied Economics Letters, 27(1), 35-40.
Lai H, Shi H, Zhou Y (2020) Regional technology gap and innovation efficiency trap in Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. PLoS ONE 15(5): e0233093. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233093
Shi, J.H. (2019) Diversified Agglomeration, Specialized Agglomeration and Innovation Efficiency of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 147-158. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2019.77014
This would also improve policy recommendation.
Corrections:
Table 1 – Internal expenditure of R&D funds (person-year)
Figure 2. has two b) panels
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents the issue of innovation efficiency in the Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. The approach to the subject is multidisciplinary and of a high scientific level.
The research method is well described, and the methodology and data used naturally lead to the conclusions presented at the end of the paper.
Considering the quality of what was presented, we recommend publishing the work.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your approval of our study. We highly appreciate your time and effort in reviewing this paper.
Reviewer 4 Report
The topic of the research is interesting. However I have some comments to the paper. The research question/s should be formulated to organise the discussion. The objective of the paper should be clearly specifed and the outline of the paper will have to be presented.
In the section 2 the concept of innovation efficiency will have to be presented. The Authors mentioned "Based on the existing reseach..." but the references are missing. It is not clear, at least in this section, why the model has been elaborated. The title of the section 2 should be more elaborated.
What are the limitations of the study and direction of futher research?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report
It is quite interesting and pragmatic to conduct the research, taking into account the classification potential of the indices not only for the pharmaceutical industry, but also their applicability in different branches. It should be noted that the criteria or weighted values obtained from the databases are subjective since it depends on the evaluating entity, among others. however, the development of the investigation was as explicit as possible.
Author Response
We sincerely appreciate your comments and suggestions. Thank you for the approval of our research. We agree that data from databases or statistic yearbooks might be subjective to some extent. We will try to obtain data from multiple sources in future research.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I consider that the authors addressed well my privies comments and suggestions and that the paper now meets the quality requirements to be published.
